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Paxton Boys
also known as the Paxtang Boys or the Paxton Rangers
The Paxton Boys and the Conestoga Massacre of 1763
Frontier settlers re-lived the nightmare of the Seven Years' War. It was in this context, in December 1763, that the Paxton men carried out their massacre. The Paxton Boys arose directly out of a local militia created by the colonial government in response to frontier demands for defense in the summer of 1763.
The Paxton Boys were a group of Scots-Irish men living in the Appalachian hills that wanted protection from Indian attacks. They made an armed march on Philadelphia in 1764. They protested the lenient way that the Quakers treated the Indians. Their ideas started the Regulator Movement in North Carolina.
From “Paxton Boys uprising”
United States history
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Paxton Boys uprising, attack in 1763 by Pennsylvania frontiersmen upon an Indian settlement during the Pontiac Indian uprising and the subsequent events related to the attack.
On December 14, 1763, about 57 drunken settlers from Paxton, Pennsylvania, slaughtered 20 innocent and defenseless Susquehannock (Conestoga) Indians, near Lancaster, Pennsylvania, whom they suspected of connivance with other Native Americans who had been pillaging and scalping. Gov. John Penn thereupon issued proclamations ordering the local magistrates to arrest and try those men involved in the massacre.
Of the attack Benjamin Franklin wrote:
The universal concern of the neighboring white people on hearing of this event, and the lamentations of the younger Indians when they returned and saw the desolation and the butchered, half-burned bodies of their murdered parents and other relations cannot well be expressed.
Since the residents of that frontier area were sympathetic to the actions of the Paxton Boys, however, no prosecutions were undertaken. Besides revealing the prevailing bias of frontiersmen against Native Americans, the Paxton Boys uprising also took on a political tone. Residents of the Pennsylvania backcountry were already embittered over the eastern counties’ disproportionate control over the colony’s legislature and the failure of the eastern-dominated legislature to provide adequate appropriations for defense of the frontier. Consequently, sparked by the events surrounding the Paxton Boys massacre (the Conestoga Massacre), about 600 armed frontiersmen marched on Philadelphia in January 1764 to vent their anger against the provincial assembly. A delegation of prominent Philadelphians, including Franklin, met the protesters and restrained them from entering the city by promising them that the legislature would provide a thorough hearing of their complaints. The assembly offered no redress for the protesters’ main grievances, though, and the colony’s Proprietary Party publicized the incident to their advantage in their campaign during the election of 1764.
Participants
- Captain Lazarus Stewart (July 4, 1734 – July 3, 1778) was an 18th-century Pennsylvanian frontiersman, a leader of the Paxton Boys (a group of Scots-Irish militants who massacred a number of Susquehannock in 1763), and a prominent commander on the Yankee (i.e., Connecticut) side in the Pennamite–Yankee War.
- Colonel Matthew Smith
- Rev. John ‘the Fighting Parson’ Elder founder
The new historical marker shows where the last Conestoga Indians were massacred by the Paxton Boys in 1763.
Source: < K. Scott Kreider/LNP Correspondent >
References
- https://www.americanhistorycentral.com/entries/paxton-boys-conestog...
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paxton_Boys#In_fiction
- https://susqnha.org/riverroots-pontiacs-war-and-the-paxton-boys/
- https://www.amphilsoc.org/blog/shoot-ye-rioters-soon-ever-edward-sh...
- https://www.amazon.com/Peaceable-Kingdom-Lost-Destruction-Experimen...
- https://pabook.libraries.psu.edu/literary-cultural-heritage-map-pa/...
- https://www.gilderlehrman.org/sites/default/files/2024-08/GLI_Colon...
- https://explorepahistory.com/odocument.php?docId=1-4-26
- https://www.britannica.com/event/Paxton-Boys-uprising
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lazarus_Stewart
- Why did ‘Hickory Boys’ become ‘Paxton Boys’? [The Scribbler] (May 24, 2021) < lancasteronline.com > The Paxton Boys, an expanded group of the Paxton Rangers who massacred the last of the Conestoga Indians here in 1763, originally were known as the Hickory Boys — a label that hits closer to home. … Why did “Paxton” replace “Hickory,” especially if the rioters themselves preferred the latter name? An educated guess would be that most of the “Boys” came not from Lancaster but from the Scots-Irish settlements of Paxton, Derry and Donegal and across the river in Cumberland County.
https://www.amphilsoc.org/blog/shoot-ye-rioters-soon-ever-edward-sh...